


What Dreams May Come

by DjaqtheRipper



Category: Inception (2010), Sin City - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2754098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DjaqtheRipper/pseuds/DjaqtheRipper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and Inception crossover that no one but me wanted to see.<br/>Arthur's stuck in a dream, and thinks he's Sin City resident, a hotshot gambler named Johnny, up against the powerful Senator Roark. Little does he know, Roark is a mark and the job is on the line. Eames enters the dream to try to keep Arthur and Roark from slipping into Limbo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams May Come

Eames wakes and promptly bites down on the impulse to be violently ill. 

It’s an occupational hazard, Arthur would say. It’s a risk we all understood that we’d signed up for, he would add, voice soft and eyes sharp, in counter to an argument Eames hadn’t yet given voice to. But Arthur can’t offer characteristically pragmatic deflections because Arthur has become victim to his own “occupational hazard”: Arthur’s lost in a dream, and no matter his own advice, no matter Eames’ life spent with the faith that the devil may care, Eames does not feel that he signed up for this. He feels cheated. He looks at Arthur’s serene face and lax body, still connected to their mark, a middle aged man their client calls Roark, the two still hooked up to the same PASIV, and wants to destroy something, preferably bone. Ariadne’s stirring, pulling herself free from the machine. The dim light catches on her glistening eyes. There’s a feeling rising up behind his eyes, not quite anger, something more vile and helpless than that, that clings and claws and writhes inside him. 

“Eames, he’s still down there-“ she spits frantically before Eames cuts her off.

“I know, Ariadne.” 

“Well?” Her damp eyes bug out of her skull in an expression halfway between fear and rage, the force of the emotion rendering her nearly incoherent.

“Well, what.” The defeat, the sudden age weighting his words disgusts him. 

“We have to go after him.” She scrubs furiously at her cheeks. “We have to.”

“It’s too late. He’s three levels deep, and I’m sure the mark’s subconscious bloody tore him to bits after all the chaos we caused down there- Look, he knew what he was getting into.” That strange feeling chokes him, roars under his skin, makes his voice come out strangled, makes his blood run cold. “Occupational hazard.” He thinks of the private security that’s only two hours from noticing Roark’s absence. He thinks of the scar on his forearm where twin compound fractures pierced his arms the last time he crossed Roark. He thinks of prison food, and how it would taste every day for the rest of his life if he were to be caught red-handed committing mindcrime. 

“That’s what Arthur would say.” Ariadne’s chin is set defiantly, her eyes burn through the tears. “But you aren’t Arthur. I know that. You know that.” He can’t bear to look at her, focuses on his clenched fists instead, on the way that they’re shaking. “I know that you love him,” she whispers, and through the burning Eames remembers all the things about Arthur that he’s going to have to force himself to forget… “and I know what he’d say, but you aren’t him, and I need you to go down there and get him.”

Eames remembers roughly pulled sutures, and the one perfect kiss stolen between rounds of gunfire in Florence, and Arthur’s crooked smirk when he thinks Eames isn’t looking. Eames remembers. So he pulls the Sig from its hip holster and hands it to her, says, “If I’m not back before this goes completely pear-shaped, get out. Run.” Her brow furrows, but she nods. 

“Get him,” she orders, “and get out.”

He inserts his IV, activates the PASIV. In the moment before sleep claims him entirely, he hears a final mutter of, “Thank you.”


End file.
